Fluxblog #303: 80s Synthpop | Squid • Fontaines DC • Goat Girl • Thee Sacred Hearts
Plus a podcast episode featuring Norman Brannon of Texas Is The Reason
This week’s episode of Fluxpod features Norman Brannon, who is best known as the guitarist for Texas Is The Reason and New End Original, but has also had careers as a writer, educator, TV presenter, and real estate agent. A lot of this episode is about following a muse through different stages of artistic pursuits and careers, the way being in a successful band when you're young is very similar to being a child star, and the creative ideals that have driven Norman's art. This episode also gets into his struggles with depression, his connection to queer culture, and the ways the recent past is quite similar to the 1980s. You can find a lot of Norman's writing about music, including a three-part essay about his experiences in the emo scene, on Talkhouse.
You can listen to the show on all the major podcast platforms – Apple, Spotify, Audible, etc – and on the Fluxblog Patreon.
This week’s playlist is DESTINATION UNKNOWN: SYNTHS AND POP 1979-1987, covering the impact of synthesizers on popular music through most of the 1980s. This set includes many beloved hits alongside a lot of other more obscure tunes. It’s a really good time! [Spotify / Apple Music]
Here’s this week’s Fluxblog posts, followed by some links to things I enjoyed elsewhere.
February 1st, 2021
Slow Secrets
Squid “Narrator”
“Narrator” starts with a premise like “what if LCD Soundsystem were about 40% more unhinged?” and quite frankly that would be more than enough to satisfy me. A crisp tight-pocket groove, a herky-jerky post-punk feel, and a weird shouting nerd? It rarely fails. But as it goes along – and at a little over 8 minutes it really does go along – the song reveals itself to something more in unexpected digressions. There’s a moody arpeggiated guitar sequence with vaguely unsettling spoken vocals by Martha Skye Murphy that feels like the song going sideways into a lateral progression, and then later a part with spiking staccato noise that’s more like passing through a sudden storm. The last chunk of the song cruises out, zooming on beyond cartharsis into some more nebulous sort of resolution.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
February 3rd, 2021
Life Ain’t Always Empty
Fontaines D.C. “A Hero’s Death (Soulwax Remix)”
This is the sort of remix that puts me in the uncomfortable position of having to point out that I think it’s far better than the original version, to such a degree that I wish Fontaines D.C. would take what Soulwax has done with their song and use it as a model for anything they’d like to make going forward. But what this really comes down to is a question of which sort of “indie” band you preferred in the early to mid 00s – the regular Fontaines D.C. version is somewhere on a British punk spectrum between The Libertines and Art Brut, while Soulwax have been working in a DFA-adjacent punk-funk vein since back in those days. I strongly prefer the latter.
But aside from that aesthetic leaning, I just think Grian Chatten’s voice just sounds much better with a bit of negative space and a more swinging groove. It’s a bit like someone you’re used to seeing dress in rather shlubby clothes show up out of nowhere in an outfit with a more flattering fit. His lyrics boil down to a list of advice, and while in the original they can feel a bit hectoring in the Soulwax version they hit with more warmth and generosity.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
February 4th, 2021
Take My Warmth Away
Goat Girl “Anxiety Feels”
“Anxiety Feels” addresses panic attacks and feeling ambivalent about taking medication for anxiety, but doesn’t sound anxious at all. It feels more like a medicated state – a gentle, slightly sterile groove and vocals that convey a rational mindset at a distance from more urgent emotions. The arrangement is crisp and clean and neatly detailed, but it’s not cold. There’s a hint of melancholy in the lead guitar and the half-sigh of the vocals, but it’s muted. Or maybe it’s more like dilution – the tone is like the lightest shades of watercolor on the furthest edge of a more saturated hue. The strongest feeling in the song comes through in a wistful refrain – “I find it hard sometimes” – but even that seems a bit hazy and detached, which makes me wonder if the song is more about imagining the medicated state than depicting a lived experience of it.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
February 5th, 2021
Can You See It In The Stars
Thee Sacred Souls “It’s Our Love”
“It’s Our Love” is a very ‘60s/‘70s type of soul ballad, and while Thee Sacred Souls don’t shy away from that retro quality they also avoid the trap of trying to fake the aura of a vintage recording. The track doesn’t feel “modern” but it does sound remarkably crisp, presenting the guitar parts and organ drone with a lovely clarity while the drums have just enough “room sound” to give it a very live feel. Josh Lane’s vocals, sung in a high tenor like Smokey Robinson, don’t even show up until 40 seconds into the song but his presence lifts the whole piece up. Not just in the sense of improving the quality, but in that his airy voice and extremely infatuated tone makes the music feel as though it’s levitating.
Buy it from Bandcamp.
LINKS LINKS LINKS
• How good is Tom Breihan in his The Number Ones column? So good that I’m willing to roll with him as he praises Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ On A Prayer,” one of the songs I hate most in this world.
• I love this Billboard article by Ron Hart from a year or so back about the grim context of The B-52’s “Love Shack” – a joyful song written at the height of the AIDS epidemic that claimed the life of the band’s original guitarist Ricky Wilson.
• There’s been a lot of lovely pieces written about Sophie this week in the wake of her untimely death on January 30th, but I particularly liked this brief tribute written by Harron Walker at Jezebel.
• I’m a huge Steely Dan fan so I found a lot to enjoy about this in-depth interview with Donald Fagen recorded in 2019 but if you just want to be entertained go to around the 16 minute mark to just taken in Fagen ruthlessly mocking Fred Armisen and Damien Chazelle, the guy who directed Whiplash and La La Land, for making terrible and insulting work that either insults or wildly misunderstands jazz.